Android Developer Income Report #10 | Hacker News Reader

Android Developer Income Report #10

kreci.net

112 pointskreci25 comments

Love these posts; even though the website is heavy on ads, I feel like the tradeoff is that you are opening up your ledger and letting us all glance at it. I have no problem with you wanting me to click an ad or two in the process.

You are genuinely producing content that is valuable to me (at the least, interesting). Thanks for sticking to your guns and continuing to do these series.

I wasn't really aware of the ads (running AdBlock), but I think he is a little bit abusing his blog. I think HN traffic is very valuable if he knows how to leverage it.

As long as people can't game HN points, I don't think there's a problem with people trying to get their ads on front page - Only if enough people thought the content was worth looking at the ads it gets upvoted, so the quality stays good. (As an aside: I don't know much about this, but wouldn't it be relatively easy to create a couple of dozen hn accounts, set up a script and upvote any post you like.. Indeed, with the amount of geeks visiting the site, I'd be surprised if it hadn't already been done. Anyone care to explain?)

in reply to your aside: you could use something like Twill for command-line navigation script (doesnt work with javascript though I don't think) http://twill.idyll.org/commands.html

Would be interesting to get a summary at some point of how many total hours you spend on each of these and when you spent it.

As usual all comments are welcome and very desired! =)

Those Google adds are really distracting for me. It's good to see you're still doing so well though.

I remember your post from about a year ago when you quit your day job and wanted to make money with website flipping. However, I haven't checked your blog since then and this looks like you're doing quite well.

What are his running costs?

are you making all your android income from those 7 apps listed on your site? Can you give a breakdown of income per app ?

quite interesting

Really? This is upvoted on HN and on the front page?

What are the apps? Let's see, all super simple, very marginal quality gag apps, presumably with lots of ads since that is the income.

And an e-book on how to do this? How to flood the Android market with apps that exist ten times over so you can make a few pennies off the ads?

Do we really need updates on this monthly? Yes, you can make a little money shoveling endless crap and putting ads on it. But I don't personally find it something to aspire to.

</rant>

I think he's scrappy, and I love how a man can pull himself up by whatever boot straps he can find.

He might not be making a killing (yet) or making anything you care about (yet), but he's making stuff by himself and making money. How many can say the same?

I've been working for myself for quite a while, and I even made some apps that were along the same lines at one point and did well off of them. (much better than this)

But I wasn't shoveling them out, I was spending some time on them and making them great.

There are lots of ways of making money, lots of ways to work for yourself, but that doesn't mean they should all be lauded.

There are a dozen broken screen apps in the Android market, I bet there are a dozen for all the apps he's made. I mean this is just spam in the market man.. come on.

I don't like to call another person's work spam unless there is a big reason to do so. As far as I can tell, he's an honest developer trying to get by. FYI, I have what I would call a thriving app business on iPhone/Android, much bigger than the OP. However, I don't think my work makes his work any less meaningful.

If you want to go rag on some spammers, there are plenty of people actually spamming people with their websites and email campaigns. I don't see how a broken screen app is comparable to stealing an email address and sending viagra spam. Or even on the same level as Honestly.com, which tricks users into giving over contact info.

The thing I like best is how he's hitting lots of revenue channels at once and tracking them. Something I learned from his posts that I never even considered was selling stock photos.

But talk about multi-faceted! It's entrepreneurship at it's finest!

I'd consider his apps novelty apps, but I don't see why that's a problem. You can buy smiling rocks and fart scented candles in stores, and nobody cries fowl. Many apparently find his apps rather delightful, and though they aren't for everyone, there appears to be a niche.

His posts get upvoted because he quit his day job and he's following a dream. It's inspirational at its core, not to mention he's being transparent and vocal about it.

I don't know what's in his ebook. That's my only hesitation when replying.

Really? Downvoting? Please comment on why you think this is frontpage material while you are at it.

The apps are crummy, there's no denying that. How does that fit in with typical HN content of trying to build good, no, great, products?

And an ebook on how to do it? sigh

Point is that it doesn't matter if the apps sucks (haven't bothered to look at them) - he has made something people want, which is what we are talking about here on hacker news.

Sometimes what people want is very, very complicated -- real-time collaborative document sharing and sometimes it is hello word with a random number generator attached (bingocardcreator.com).

Make something people want. Not "build the next Facebook". Not "be the next Andrew Mason or Mark Pincus". Not "prove your mastery of social UX by founding the next Quora". Nope, just make something people want. You never know where that will lead to.

You didn't ask "Please comment on why you think this is frontpage material while you are at it." on your first comment. You are saying something like "You stupid HN crowd, this shouldn't be on front page and it's useless".

You are not the one who decides things that get to the front page, but I don't bother answering if you asked why I upvoted it: It's interesting.

Don't worry. Recently HN is just a place for mediocre people. Nothing to see here.

That was uncalled for. OP is from an ex-communist country, probably with a not very business savy culture and he is limited to ad-supported models, as Google won't let developers from his country to sell on the market.

Yet, he manages to make more money than working for the man. His story is much more outstanding than most of the HNs users.

I am from ex-communist country. Nothing to say more.

It's not that his apps are innovative, but it's not up to you to decide if they are spam or not.

Why don't you show us your apps as well ? I bet I'll find something to criticize

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